#dldcities

[hirshberg]

DLDcities SFO - Maker Cities Keynote

"This word 'Maker Cities' is kind of a new idea on the landscape. It's a combination of the Maker movement, which is quite new, and of all of this reurbanization. So I'd like to explore that today, and also look at how I think it's really an amazing act of renewal and excitement for our nation." Read Transcript

[dld]

What Will Future Cities Look Like?

A group of architects, scientist and businessman shared their different views on this at DLD 2012, and of course, you may well have yours. 

Edwin Chan, a Carlifonia based architect says future cities do not necessarily have to be technologically advanced:''Technology sometiems distracts modern architects from values and common sense' According to Chan, more and more of architects are now getting obsessed with advanced materials and structures that are facilitated by technology.  'The modern world encourages abundance and excessive consumption' and Chan says people needs to go back to the real needs of human being when planning modern buildings, instead of getting driven by what technology enables us to do.

But Hilary Maron, a scientist and Carlo Ratti, another architect hold a rather different approach. Both of them believe in collecting real time information of morden cities and manipulating the information to make the cities more efficient. Ratti takes their lab project in singapore for example, real time information like energy consumption, pollution and traffic control data will be collected and shared, to help better understand how the city is running and how to improve it. In Singapore, says Ratti, it is extremely difficult to get a taxi when it rains. So integrating the weather forecast system and digital city map into the city taxi will help better distribute taxis when it people need them the most. 

Pedro Miranda from Siemens talks about the company's recent focus on improving electrical charging system in the cities to promote usage of carbon-emission free electrical cars. 'Modern cities are often too compact to implement the new charging system', which according to Miranda is the key obstacle to a greener future cities.